I’ve folded myself into a neat circle, drowsing while they talk – while he talks, actually. Her voice has become more of a hiss, urgent and angry, and I feel the beginning of a dream coming in. Her questions echo in my own mind as if I had voiced them. Not that she gets answers, in my dreams or waking life. She keeps hammering him for details but he’s gotten tired. Tired and hungry, and there’s the hint of tears in his voice. ‘Honest, Care. I’m telling you the truth.’
She believes him, I can tell. She slumps to the ground beside me, letting her bag slide to the ground, and I lift my head from my tail in order to examine her face. Angry red spots have formed on her thin cheeks but she’s staring off into space now, not at the waifish boy who still stands before her.
‘Care?’ He’s shifting from foot to foot, uneasy or uncomfortable. She sees it too, and her voice is gentle when she looks up.
‘Yes?’
‘Can I – I’ll be right back.’
She nods and he dashes off. I marvel at the planes of her face. It should be softer, her cheeks more rounded. And she should be more alert, I remind myself. That boy may not intend harm. That, at least, is the girl’s assessment, but he is a small thing and vulnerable.
I stand and stretch, my back arching as I do. She reaches out and her hand is warm. I lean into it, butting my head against her palm and she fondles my ear, running her thumb and forefinger over its ragged end.
‘How did you get so chewed up, Blackie?’ Her voice is warm, too, and although she does not expect an answer, I respond as best I can, pushing my head again into her hand. Purring to explain a past I myself no longer remember.
‘Care?’ We look up. The boy has returned, and it is all I can do not to growl at the interruption. At my own inattention, as well. If this boy could come so close without my realizing it …
Care is on her feet as fast as I am. But while she pretends to stretch, peering around the dumpster, I simply sniff the air. No, no other human has come into our alley, and the sounds I hear on the street beyond remain constant in their rhythms, careless of the three of us.
‘What?’ She yawns, and I realize that last night must have offered her the first good night’s sleep in a while, despite the men in pursuit, the boy in her care. My inability to communicate wounds me deeply. There is something about this girl.
‘They’re there. The men.’ The boy looks scared – though whether of Care’s response or the men he’s referring to, I cannot tell. ‘I saw them.’
Care’s alert now, as am I. We should run, I know. Find the tracks and keep going, but we won’t. I feel my fur bristling, my whiskers alert. With a nod to the boy and a quick glance at me, Care signals, and we set out. The hunt is on.
Some things are easier when you are small. The boy, for example. Simply by dipping his head and hunching over he can appear even younger than his years. His height keeps him below eye level as well. As we navigate our way back up the street, his main concern is not being trodden underfoot as the city goes about its business.
I have the same advantage, of course, and even now, with the sun at its zenith, my color is an advantage. What shadow there is I can blend into, and if I am fast and dart in just such a way, tail low to the ground, the pedestrians avoid me, seeing in my movement something dangerous, uglier even than my feral self.
Care doesn’t have this advantage, not with her pink hair and the height that looks like it came on her recently, stretching her slender frame. Not with the curves just beginning to show, despite her too-spare flesh. The confident strut she assumed on the way downtown won’t work now either. She’s on the prowl, but others are, too, and I find my concern growing as we get farther from the alley. At the first corner, when others march ahead, I feel her hesitate.
‘Watch it!’ A man in a suit nearly bowls her over. His companion, whose trench coat swings so low to the ground I could grab it, curses under her breath as she detours around us, nearly shoving Care off the sidewalk, bustling by in a cloud of floral scent. I look up at her, concern making me forget my own vulnerability out here on the noisy thoroughfare. The girl must see this. She ducks and scoops me up so quickly I barely complain, so taken am I with my own thoughts. If she could slick back that hair …
I raise a paw as if to wash, even as she holds me. I press one ear flat, peering up to see if she is watching. The scent of those passers-by – sharp and clean and foreign – lingers. The city is overrun.
‘Care,’ the boy whispers, gesturing her over, and she puts me down. But even as she does, she pulls something from her bag. That scent again, of flowers. It is a kerchief of some sort, a square of filmy cloth in the tan of that trench coat, edged in red and black. Care ties it around her head, covering her shock of hair, and my tail resumes its proud loft.